E-commerce companies, including BigBasket, Grofers, Amazon and Flipkart, continue to run restricted services across cities as they work with local authorities to streamline operations.
While several of these e-tailers expect to resume delivery of groceries and essentials in a few days, they face a challenge of getting frontline workers back to their warehouses and on to the streets, multiple industry executives told ET.
“We were not able to resume services at a lot of places but were able to meet with authorities and should be able to resolve all the on-ground issues by Thursday so that we are live in most of the cities before the weekend,” said Albinder Dhindsa, cofounder and CEO of Grofers.
Dhindsa said Delhi NCR and Bangalore are expected to get back to normal in a day or two, while Kolkata and Hyderabad are also likely to be operational soon.
“In cities like Mumbai, Jaipur, Noida, Ghaziabad and Lucknow, we actively worked with the authorities and by Thursday we should be operational there. But we have a backlog of seven days, which we will need to service first. There are still some conversations ongoing in Gurgaon, Chennai, Pune, Vizag, and Chandigarh so, for now, those cities continue to be closed” Hari Menon, cofounder & CEO, BigBasket said.
BigBasket has also narrowed its product selection from 30,000 items to 3,500 essentials. “We want to get more quantities of the basics out first. General merchandise and beauty have been put on hold,” he said.
Deliveries for online retailers had come to a halt over the last three days as fulfilment centres were closed, on-ground staff and delivery personnel were not able to moving on the roads, and trucks carrying supplies across state borders were pulled up.
Some state governments and local authorities have since then acted swiftly to remove the roadblocks, but not all. “We have been assured of the safe and smooth passage of our supply chain and delivery executives by local law enforcement authorities and are resuming our grocery and essentials services later today (Wednesday),” Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said in a statement.
Supported by the central and state governments, as well as local police, supply has resumed and the situation will get better in 2-3 days, a senior executive of a leading e-commerce company said, without going on record.
E-commerce marketplaces Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal said they will accord priority to delivering essential items. They said non-essential orders are expected to be fulfilled only after April 15.
“We will prioritise processing of essentials, like orders relating to personal and home hygiene, safety, among others. We will continue to accept other orders too and will inform buyers that these will be delivered once movement restrictions are lifted,” a spokesperson for Snapdeal said.
Flipkart expected orders in Bengaluru to restart by Wednesday evening, followed by Delhi NCR on Thursday. A senior Flipkart executive told ET that it was in talks with local authorities in Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad to kickstart delivery of groceries through its Supermart, over the next few days.
Further, e-commerce companies await clarity from government agencies on what goods are termed essentials, as they look to service a larger variety than just “food, pharmaceuticals and medical devices” that the Ministry of Home Affairs had allowed in its March 24 order.
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